


Black Lines

by starfleetblues



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/F, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-19
Updated: 2014-11-19
Packaged: 2018-02-26 07:36:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,596
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2643563
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starfleetblues/pseuds/starfleetblues
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jayce Kirk and Lea McCoy meet each other at a swim meet when Jayce mistakes Lea for her friend Spock from the back. Even worse, Lea is the lifeguard that Jayce has a crush on from the Y where she swims club.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Black Lines

**Author's Note:**

  * For [shiptoomuch](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shiptoomuch/gifts).



> so the whole 'black lines' thing is a swim joke that the black line at the bottom of the pool is a swimmer's only form of entertainment during practice and idk   
> I own no rights to these characters/Star Trek/yadda yadda, please don't sue me I'm a poor teenaged lifeguard who just likes Star Trek thank

Swim teams have no boundaries. Not on the club level, and certainly not on the high school girls level. 

Of course, swimmers were also in-fucking-sane. Who in their right mind would want to spend two hours every day after school in a freezing cold pool, staring at a black line the whole time? 

Lea should know that by now, she really should. After two years lifeguarding at the local club team’s practices and four on her high school’s team, she should be aware of the (lack of) personal space rules swimmers obeyed. 

But it wasn’t really until the first invitational of her senior year that she really, really understood. Lea was talking to coach Boyce about her 400 free relay when her ass was stinging. Like, stinging from someone slapping it really, really hard, stinging. 

Lea turned around to see a swimmer from North looking extremely embarrassed, but still laughing her ass off. She was kind of cute, Lea noted, and looked vaguely familiar, but Lea wasn’t sure from where.

“Oh my god, I am so sorry! I thought you were my friend Spock, you look kind of like her from the back!”

Lea’s momentarily speechless as her brain processes the cute girl. “Uh, hey, don’t worry about it. Swimmers have no personal space, right?”

The blonde laughs and sticks out her hand. “I’m Jayce, by the way. I’m a junior at North.”

“Lea, I’m a senior and McHenry’s captain. You look really familiar, do you swim club at all?”

Jayce doesn’t look surprised at all. “Yeah, I swim at the Y. Wait, are you a guard there?”

Lea laughs. “Yeah, I am. I thought about doing club there for a bit but thought it would interfere too much with my work schedule.” 

Jayce shrugs. “I like it a lot, and I’ve made plenty of friends, so I think it’s worth it. You should join us when this season is done!” Her eyes light up at the prospect, and Lea laughs. 

“Let me get my work schedule figured out first, kid. I’ll definitely consider it, though,” she promises, and Jayce grins.

“Cool!”

“Lea, cheers!” her co-captain, Gina M’Benga yells, and Lea sighs. 

“Shit. Good luck today, Jayce!” 

Jayce waves and turns back to her own team. She was fucked, Lea was too cute for her own good, and there was no way she could get over it.  
\--------

“I’m a lesbian, just so you know,” a voice says behind Jayce in CLS’s locker room, and she whirls around, towel held up to cover her chest. Lea’s nonchalantly wringing her hair out with her towel, and Jayce’s heart skips a beat or ten. 

“Guess it’s a good thing I’m bi, then,” she tries to say casually, but her words come out jumbled and then nothing comes out except a soft sigh because Lea’s mouth is covering her own and Jayce thinks that this is so, so wrong, but she doesn’t care because she doesn’t want to be right anymore.

\--------

“Good luck,” Lea says with a wink to the girl in the lane next to her for the 100 butterfly, and Jayce rolls her eyes.

“You too,” she says with a smile for the masses who definitely believe that both girls are straight, and snaps her goggles over her face.

Lea loses by three hundredths of a second to Jayce, who is a graceful winner. “Nice job,” the younger girl says as she drifts over to shake Lea’s hand. 

“You too,” Lea says truthfully- she never expected Jayce to best her by that little of a margin in the event she currently held the school’s record for. Jayce winks and releases Lea’s hand to drift to the other side of her lane, and Lea moves to shake the hand of a Russian foreign exchange student from Jayce’s school- Pashenka? No, Pasha, that was it. But then the next race is starting, the girls are diving over heads, and Lea and Jayce are climbing out and trying not to look like they’re going to the locker room too close together.

\--------

Six weeks of dating, seven, eight, and Lea and Jayce are nearly done with the season. 

“Are you doing the fly this weekend?” Lea asks while she lays on Jayce’s floor doing homework, wet hair still tied up and a mug of Mrs. Kirk’s famous hot chocolate sitting on the floor next to her calculus book. 

“Nah,” Jayce shakes her head while twirling pencil aimlessly, her own English essay long done. “Pike wants me to focus on the 500, so I have nothing this week and only the 5 at sectionals. Plus, he doesn’t want me straining this again,” Jayce motions to the shoulder that she tore two years ago with a grimace, and Lea’s heart breaks because Jayce has been in so much pain this season, and there’s nothing Lea can do. 

“Pike’s a smart coach, I’m sure he just wants to make sure you don’t get hurt. And you’re really close to state in the 5, aren’t you?”  
Jayce nods. “Yeah, but I was just hoping to go for the fly this year. I guess there’s next year, though. You’ll come if I make it, right?”

Lea clambers up onto the bed to sit across from her girlfriend. “I wouldn’t miss it for the world, babe.” She kisses Jayce’s forehead and it’s a silent promise to always support each other, always be there, no matter what.

\--------

Jayce Kirk could be mistaken for a mermaid, or an Olympic swimmer, and no one is really sure which would be a better compliment to her. Jayce moves with grace and speed that no one else in the pool has, not even the girls from Lake Forest, and she is the envy of every other swimmer there. She is fully expected to go to Olympic Trials in 2016, and she is fully expected to make the team. Jayce cuts through the water like she’s been doused in oil, her tech suit propelling her to a finish that’s a full six seconds faster than the time she needs to make state in her 500. The stands of Lake Forest that have fallen dead silent for her final five yards erupt into cheers from North’s parents, and Jayce’s teammates can be heard halfheartedly whooping for their star swimmer. But louder than all the rest, louder than even Winona and certainly louder than North’s swimmers, Lea is cheering and clapping for her girlfriend, and tears are streaming down her face because she’s unbelievably proud of Jayce and all that’s been accomplished over the season. Jayce falls backwards into the water after shaking hands with the girls on either side of her, pulling her body backwards for a few strokes before rolling over to swim a cooldown length. 

When Jayce climbs out, she sees Lea standing a few feet away and beaming because she did it, Jayce is going to state as a junior and Lea could not possibly be more proud of her girlfriend. Jayce pulls off her cap and can’t help but grin because Lea is right there and so, so proud, when no one else is. Lea’s wrapping her arms around Jayce and whispering “You did it, you did it, Jayce,” and there’s so much emotion that all the younger girl can do is try not to cry, because she feels so loved in that moment, and Lea means the world to her. And Jayce pulls back from Lea’s hug and kisses her so fiercely, pouring everything that she feels right now, happiness and excitement and love and hate and importance into the kiss, and Lea just knows everything Jayce is saying because she knows Jayce better than anyone. She knows Jayce tried to kill herself, she knows about the sexual abuse Jayce underwent at the hands of her stepfather, and mostly, she knows how Jayce needs to prove to herself that she can do whatever she tries to, and that Jayce is trying to live up to the legacy her father left behind at McHenry, setting every record in at least one of the categories. 

When Jayce finally breaks the kiss, her eyes are shining with tears. “Lea, I-”

“I know,” Lea says with a smile. “I love you too. Go get your medal, kid.”

\--------

Jayce sits in the bench seat, curled up against Lea’s side as her girlfriend laugh’s at Gina’s jokes when the North team goes out for dinner and invites Jayce along. Carol had declared Jayce an honorary member of the team after their PDA, and for once, Jayce felt like she belonged on a team. The North girls had welcomed her with open arms, not caring that she was a lesbian or that everyone thought she was a massive bitch, but instead finding her to be a genuinely nice person, and even funny when she wanted to be. Lea’s hand was woven into Jayce’s chlorine-ridden hair, and Jayce was falling asleep as the conversation showed no signs of ending.

“Okay you, let’s get you home,” Lea said a few minutes later, nudging Jayce back to consciousness. “C’mon,” she urged, laughing as her girlfriend groaned.

“Leaaaa,” Jayce whined. “It’s cold out. I don’t wanna go out.”

Lea rolled her eyes. “Come on, you big baby. You can crash on my floor tonight, then. My house is always warmer than yours.”

“You’re the best, Lea,” Jayce mumbled happily as she struggled to zip up her coat and stay upright. “Let’s go home.”

Lea knew Jayce was right. Home wasn’t Jayce’s house or Lea’s house, it was wherever they were together.

**Author's Note:**

> fun fact: Lake Forest is implied to be the best school there, they did win this sectional meet (I looked sue me), and Matt Grevers, who is an Olympic freestyler, went there. His mom coaches the girls team still (and maybe the boys too, I'm not sure), so me making Jayce better than the girls from that school is like, a HUGE deal.


End file.
